The Adnams family
Small gold hoop in his right ear, black sweatshirt pulled on over a barely visible shirt and tie - Simon Loftus has already made his first point, and he hasn't opened his mouth yet. You know his staff will call each other by their first names, and the restaurant downstairs will be bursting with bonhomie.
The tousle-haired chairman of Adnams stares out of his first-floor office window in the Crown hotel, Southwold, Suffolk, the hub of the Adnams operation, as he lists his achievements with justifiable pride.
Loftus's family were always large shareholders in the Adnams family business, but it wasn't until his father died when Loftus was 17 that he made plans to join the company. He started out with an unimportant job in the brewery's tiny wine department, where he "couldn't do much harm".
But under Loftus's direction the business has grown to an annual turnover of £30m, picking up a mantlepiece full of awards on the way.
Adnams comprises 100 tenanted pubs, the Sole Bay Brewery, which sells 80%of its beer to the free trade, and the wine business. Wines are Loftus's domain.It falls into three categories - retail(shops and an international mail-order business), trade sales to hotels and restaurants (Adnams has depots in London, Norwich and Cambridge) and the agency business.
The reluctant hotelier
Adnams took over Haughton Fine Wines in 1993, restructuring it as Haughton Agencies and selling wine from France and the New World to trade buyers in the UK. Then there are the hotels in Suffolk, which Loftus also oversees - the Swan and the Crown in Southwold, the Anchor in Walberswick, and the Cricketers at Reydon.
Though an enthusiastic wine merchant, Loftus calls himself a "reluctant" restaurateur and hotelier. "I swore I would never get involved in the restaurant and hotel business. It's idiotic - the hours are difficult and the business is dominated by volatile personalities. But then the Crown took off. When a hotel restaurant is going well there is a buzz about it which is exhilarating," he says.
How did he get involved? Adnams needed to expand its offices, then housed in the stable yard of the Crown. Loftus persuaded fellow directors to take it over, primarily as a place where customers could enjoy their wine with food.
Traditional systems of hotel hierarchy have been thrown out in favour of a friendly approach - hence the first-name only policy, even for the head chef. Loftus says: "It galls me when that hierarchy happens in kitchens, especially seeing the way some people treat their kitchen porters - if you can keep them sweet you have probably solved your industrial relations problems in the kitchen." This applies to management at all levels. "Teamwork is where it's at," he adds.
Moving the conversation back to wine, Loftus loses some of his disarming directness and relaxes into his favourite subject. "I love wine passionately. I love the taste and variety, but what has always kept me going as a wine merchant and stopped me getting bored is constantly meeting new people and exploring new regions."
Loftus claims to be one of the few wine merchants who "actually bother to go travelling".
Exciting discovery
He is very excited about northern Spain, where ancient traditions are being revived in isolated vineyards. He says: "They have the most fantastic raw materials - incredible vines and vineyards, but the wines are poorly made."
Loftus spends less time out of the UK searching for new wines than he used to. He now puts his trust in his five-strong team of buyers. But the final decision about a wine is always his.
One of the team's most exciting finds this year, by buyers Rob Chase and Fiona Bacon, was a white Beaujolais made from Chardonnay grapes, from the least fashionable, southern end of the region. "I have long since passed the threshold of Chardonnay fatigue and don't get excited about new Chardonnays," he says. "But this one has the qualities of a superior wine from the Côte d'Or - length, quality, interest - a very exciting discovery. We sell it for £6.50 a bottle - and it's worth twice the price."
Loftus uses his knowledge of producers and wine-makers to pepper the company wine list with colourful witticisms, descriptive travel accounts and personal anecdotes that have customers reaching for the phone to order a case.
Service point
His eyes deepen from piercing blue to battleship grey at the subject of wine service in hotels and restaurants, however. The Crown has a policy of marking up wines by no more than £5 on the retail price and there are modest mark-ups on the wines sold by the glass (about 20 available at any one time). Loftus says: "Most restaurants and hotels mark up wines two or three times - customers don't like it."
What the customer wants becomes the subject of a stinging, arrogant (even he admits it) and lengthy diatribe against restaurants and hotels in general. "Most hotels are run by people who don't think about their customers - they just think about making money."
And service charges are "a hideous business". He curses hotels that lump a sum on the end of bills, especially when service has been poor. This invariably ends in a row. He threatens to sack any member of his own staff caught with an outstretched palm and tells them to close credit card slips. Tipping, though, if the customer wants to, is okay.
"I start most things in business from the point of view of the end recipient. I use hotels a lot on my wine travels and am a critical user. I ask what do I want? What do I like?"
And what does he like? "Gravetye Manor in Surrey," he says, without hesitation. "Peter Herbert has got so many things right down in East Grinstead. He has built on what is intrinsic in the house and landscape. Everything seems to spring naturally from what's there - that reflects my attitude."
Stacked on the dressing table in Adnams's hotel bedrooms are his three books - Anatomy of The Wine Trade (Abe's Sardines and Other Stories), A Pike in the Basement (Tales of a Hungry Traveller) and his most recent book, Puligny Montrachet, Journal of a Village in Burgundy, which won the 1993 Glenfiddich Drink Book of the Year award. Under that is the 1996 Adnams wine list. And there are two more books on the way. So when does he get the time to write? "Lying in bed while my wife is in the bath."
